


When Did We Forget

by yopumpkinhead



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 01:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5520599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/yopumpkinhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>...then Dean had taken the Mark and become a demon, and as much as he hated to admit it to himself, even after Sam had cured him, he hadn’t really cared if Sam did something stupid because of his freaky pain tolerance. That had been the Mark talking, just like it had been talking when he’d wished Sam dead on a funeral pyre, but at least the issue of Sam not noticing injuries hadn’t come up since Dean had taken on the Mark. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Until it did.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Did We Forget

**Author's Note:**

> For Cam ([ccwinchester](http://ccwinchester.tumblr.com/)), for the [Bitter Sam Girl Club Secret Santa Exchange](http://bittersamgirlclub.tumblr.com/tagged/bsgc-secret-santa-2015). You asked for hurt!sam/comforting!dean and Sleepy!sammy (though this ended up being a bit more, er, groggy!Sammy, whoops). Hope you enjoy! :)

Ever since he came back from Hell, Sam had had an abnormally - _freakishly_ \- high pain tolerance. Dean hadn’t given it much thought at the time, except to check Sam out a little more thoroughly after fights in case Sam hadn’t noticed an injury. He’d been too preoccupied with Leviathan and the more important problems surrounding Sam’s inability to distinguish what was real; and anyway after Castiel had taken away the hallucinations, Sam had been a little better about keeping track on his own. But Dean remembered Bobby having to stop Sam from doing things like grabbing the camp kettle with his bare hands because he didn’t register the boiling heat as painful, or filing his own skin right off if he wasn’t careful when sharpening knives.

Then Bobby had died, and Dean had gone to Purgatory, and Sam had started the Trials which was a hell of a lot worse for him than not noticing minor injuries, and then Gadreel had been healing Sam, and then Dean had taken the Mark and become a demon, and as much as he hated to admit it to himself, even after Sam had cured him, he hadn’t really cared if Sam did something stupid because of his freaky pain tolerance. That had been the Mark talking, just like it had been talking when he’d wished Sam dead on a funeral pyre, but at least the issue of Sam not noticing injuries hadn’t come up since Dean had taken on the Mark.

Until it did.

They were a little over three hours out from Quaker Valley, Oregon, driving into the gathering darkness of a fall evening. They’d stopped the werepires - Nachzehrer - werepires was a way cooler name anyway - and saved the town. Everybody except the alpha and the original human dead guy had made it out alive. A good outcome, all things considered, even if Dean ached from his hair to his toes and poor Baby had been half-totaled. Sam had seemed a little banged up but otherwise fine, too; had folded himself stiffly into the passenger seat and fallen asleep within five minutes of leaving town. That was normal enough that Dean didn’t give it a second thought, until he stopped for gas at a little backwoods truck stop and Sam didn’t wake up.

“Sam,” Dean said, prodding his brother’s shoulder. “Hey, Sam, c’mon. There ain’t another bathroom for two hundred miles and I don’t want to have to pull over in half an hour so you can take a leak.”

Sam didn’t respond, didn’t so much as twitch. Dean frowned and nudged him again, harder. Sam’s head rocked down against the window with an uncomfortable _thud_ , but he didn’t otherwise move. “Sam!” Dean said sharply, and reached out a hand to cup Sam’s jaw and lift his head away from the window—

Sam’s skin was freezing. Dean had touched enough corpses to recognize what bloodless skin felt like and his heart slammed to a halt in his chest. “SAM!” he shouted, even as he reached with his other hand to find a pulse, check for breath, and his heart stuttered to life again when he found both. But Sam’s pulse was weak and fluttery and way too fast, and his breaths were short and shallow against Dean’s palm.

Symptoms of blood loss, but Sam looked fine, Dean had glanced over him back at the werepire nest and hadn’t seen anything worrisome. He wrapped an arm around Sam’s chest and leaned him forward, trying to get a look at his back in the harsh shadows of the gas station lighting.

There. The bottom half of Sam’s jacket was soaked with blood, and more blood stained the Impala’s seat, pooled in congealing puddles underneath him. The worst of it seemed to be concentrated on a spot just above Sam’s right hip, and Dean carefully, gently, peeled the jacket up enough to see what was wrong.

A wide jagged shard of glass jutted out of Sam’s lower back, a thin thread of blood still oozing slowly around it. It was angled sharply upward, toward his stomach, and Dean could just picture Sam getting knocked on his ass into a pile of debris and this shard sliding up under his jacket to stab through his flesh. The angle of the shard and the fabric of Sam’s shirt had kept it from bleeding too profusely, which was probably why Dean hadn’t noticed it in the first place, but three hours of steady slow bleeding was still an awful lot of blood lost. He wanted to scream at Sam for not saying anything, for not mentioning that _he’d been freaking impaled_ , but too late Dean remembered that Sam probably hadn’t registered it as anything more painful than a bruise.

Dean flipped the jacket back down, tried to apply pressure to the wound through the fabric without pushing the shard any deeper into Sam’s body. With his free hand he dug out his phone and dialed 911. He had no idea how far they were from a hospital; the last sign he’d seen had been all the way back in Quaker Valley, but if they had to wait three hours for an ambulance to get here—

He bit back the panic long enough to answer the operator’s questions: _My brother’s bleeding to death. I need an ambulance. Truck stop off Highway 20, a little past Buchanan. Hurry!_

The operator promised him there was a hospital less than half an hour away, and that an ambulance would be there soon. Dean hung up and wrapped his arm around Sam’s chest again, holding him upright, keeping pressure on the wound. A month ago Dean had - the Mark had - Dean had - told Sam he wanted him dead, wanted to see him burn for what he’d done to Charlie. Now, the only thing he could think was _please, no, please, no, no, no, Sam—!_

He closed his eyes and held Sam tighter. The ambulance would get here in time. It had to get here in time.

It had to.

*             *             *

The dream was the same as it always was: harsh flashes of light that didn’t illuminate but only cast the shadows that much deeper; the stench of ozone and sulfur and death; the taste of coppery blood on his tongue; his own screams echoing in his ears. But it was different, too, because this time Sam couldn’t feel the bone-deep spikes of pain where razor-edged chains sliced and yanked at his flesh. Couldn’t feel the bite of the manacles around his wrists and ankles, couldn’t feel the burn of flames on his skin.

It was strange enough that it pushed him right out of the dream, dead lightning and razor chains fading to fluorescent lights and scratchy hospital sheets. Hospitals always smelled a little like death, but the ozone and sulfur were gone, and all Sam could taste was the gross fuzziness of long unconsciousness. His head felt thick and his body felt distant, and a sudden surge of panic flashed through him. The last time he’d woken up in a hospital, it had been with an angel inside him, even if he hadn’t known it at the time, and he still remembered the sickening awful feeling of not being in control of his own body.

He tried to move, tried to struggle, but his body was sluggish and barely responsive. He could feel _things_ digging into his skin, wrapped around his face, and the dream was still too close in his mind and he panicked, trying to grab them, shove them away, but his body _wasn’t moving_ and what if there was another angel in him, what if something else had taken over his body, what if Dean had given him away to another monster—

“Sam!”

Dean’s voice, and rough hands caught Sam’s arms, holding him immobile, pushing him back down to the hospital bed. Sam struggled, but his body still wasn’t responding correctly and the hands held him against the thin mattress until he sagged and went limp, too exhausted to fight any more.

“ _Sam_ ,” Dean said again, his voice sharp and worried.

Slowly the haze cleared. Slowly the room around Sam came into focus: pale green hospital walls, beeping monitoring equipment, bleached-white sheets. Dean leaning over Sam, holding him down, concern making his eyes wide and his mouth tight. The ugly cuts on Dean’s face and neck had been cleaned and bandaged, and he’d swapped his bloody jacket and shirt for a clean set. “Sam,” he said once more. “You with me?”

Sam swallowed. His head still felt too thick and his body still felt too distant, but he managed to force out the words: “Is there an angel in me?”

Dean stared at him. Sam coughed, the motion sending a spike of distant, cotton-wrapped pain unexpectedly from a spot on his lower back. He swallowed hard against it and drew in air past the cannula under his nose. “Is there an angel in me?” he asked again, and the words were clearer this time.

“What—No,” Dean said, incredulous. “No way! Sam—” He shook his head. “No way in hell, man.”

“Then why can’t I move?”

Dean gave him an exasperated look. “Because, one, you lost enough blood that the doctors were talking about organ damage; and two, they gave you a heavy-duty painkiller when they stitched up the hole in your back.” He nodded toward the IV drip hanging by the side of the bed, its tube running down and into Sam’s arm just below where Dean was still holding him to the bed. “You aren’t possessed, it’s just you’re about as strong as a newborn kitten right now.”

“Prove it,” Sam managed. The dream was still too close, and he still had nightmares of his own hand clamping over Kevin’s head.

Several emotions flashed over Dean’s face: anger, surprise, frustration, hurt. Then his expression smoothed over and he nodded slowly. “You gonna try to rip out your IV again if I let go?”

Sam tried to shake his head; he didn’t manage much more than a twitch and even that little movement was enough to send another spike of pain up from his lower back. He remembered landing wrong after getting thrown through a window in the Nachzehrer nest, but he’d had six of the things coming after him and he hadn’t exactly had time to care about it. He made himself breathe deeply and ignore it.

Dean took the head twitch for what it was; let go of Sam and pulled out a pocketknife. He grimaced as the blade bit into the pad of his thumb, where the wound would bleed a lot without doing much real damage, then quickly sketched a banishing sigil on the wall beside Sam’s bed and pressed his palm to it. The sigil didn’t react - no flash of light, no thrum of power.

No angels around to banish.

Sam closed his eyes and sagged back against the pillows. _You’re fine_ , he told himself. _It’s fine._ _You’re fine._

The hospital bed creaked as Dean sat down on its edge. Sam opened his eyes in time to see the sorrow and guilt on Dean’s face. “I learned my lesson last time,” Dean said softly. He looked up, green eyes meeting Sam’s own. “I ain’t gonna do that again.” He hesitated, gaze dropping to his hands where they curled in his lap. “...shouldn’t’ve done it then, either.”

For a second all Sam could do was stare at him. It had been actual years since Dean had really, truly apologized for anything, and Sam almost wanted to chalk this up to a morphine-induced hallucination. He twisted his arm a little against the mattress, pressing on the IV needle and sending a faint sting of pain up his arm. Dean didn’t vanish, though Sam saw him notice the movement, saw his mouth tighten a little. He felt like he should say something, at least acknowledge Dean’s words, but he didn’t know what to say. Not _it’s okay_ , because it definitely wasn’t, and not _don’t worry about it_ , because there were some things Sam was okay with Dean worrying over, to ensure they didn’t happen again.

His thoughts were still sluggish, though, and before he could come up with anything to say, Dean sat up a little straighter. “How’re you feeling?” he asked, his voice forcibly light.

Sam sighed, but let it go. Dean’s tolerance for touchy-feely conversations was low at the best of times, and Sam had missed his chance. He managed to shrug one shoulder. “Tired, I guess.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Tired,” he said, exasperated. “Only you could get stabbed in the back and come away saying you’re just ‘tired’.”

“Stabbed?” Sam repeated. Dean had said something about doctors stitching up a hole in his back, but Sam didn’t remember getting stabbed. He’d come away bruised from fighting the Nachzehrer, but that was it.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “The werepires knocked you on your ass once or twice, didn’t they?”

“I—yeah,” Sam admitted. “But—” He broke off, his sluggish brain finally putting two and two together, remembering again crashing backward through the window and landing with a spike of pain in his hip. “Oh. How bad?”

“Didn’t hit anything vital,” Dean said. “If we’d noticed it right away it would have been a few butterfly bandages and some gauze until Cas could fix it. But since we _didn’t_ notice it, you almost bled to death instead.” He shook his head. “Seriously, man, how did you not notice you had a freaking four-inch glass shard in your back?”

Sam shrugged again. “Dunno. Didn’t feel it, I guess.”

“And you didn’t feel the blood, either? You were bleeding all over the goddamn seat.”

“I thought it was just sweat,” Sam admitted.

“Oh,” Dean said sarcastically. “Just sweat. So you _thought_ you were just getting your disgusting swamp-ass all over my baby’s seat.”

“Ew,” Sam said. “No. And I was wearing a jacket. And the seats are gonna need a good clean anyway.”

Dean grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

“Hey, at least it’ll give you something to do,” Sam said. “Something that isn’t washing cars in those damn shorts.”

“What’s wrong with my shorts?” Dean protested.

Sam glared at him. “There are parts of you I do not _ever_ need to see, Dean.”

“My shorts are _fine_ ,” Dean huffed. A mischievous sparkle lit his eyes and he waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe next time I’ll wear _just_ the shorts, _then_ you can complain.”

“Ew!” Sam said again, but he couldn’t stop the smile that curled his mouth. “Jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean answered, and grinned back. He patted Sam’s knee through the blankets. “Get some sleep, Samuel,” he said lightly. “We’ll head back to the bunker tomorrow and Cas can fix you up.”

“And you,” Sam said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean agreed. “And next time, you _tell_ me when you feel ‘just sweat’ after a fight, okay? I’d rather see your sweaty gross shirt a hundred times than realize you’ve been bleeding out for the last three hours ever again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, matching Dean’s tone. He closed his eyes, letting himself sink against the mattress.

He heard his brother snort, then Dean pushed lightly against Sam’s knee one more time. “Sleep,” he said. “We got ass to kick.”

Sam wanted to nod, wanted to say something back, but the sluggishness had turned into bone-deep exhaustion and it and the painkillers were tugging him down to unconsciousness. He could still feel the dip in the mattress where Dean sat, could still feel Dean’s hand on his knee, and for just a minute, as the last of his consciousness drifted away, he let himself feel small again, safe in the knowledge that his big brother was there to protect him.

 


End file.
